Annie e os Bandidos

Amanda Plummer and Diane Lane have the title roles as Cattle Annie And Little Britches in this really outstanding film that seems to have disappeared. As it was it was given limited release and held up for two years being shot in 1979. Usually that means bad news for a film. But not in this case.

According to a recent biography of Burt Lancaster the collapse of the elephantine budgeted Heaven's Gate made the studios gun shy about westerns. It was the main reason the film was held up. Probably Lancaster Oscar nominated performance in Atlantic City made the studio change its mind.

A pair of Hollywood legends Burt Lancaster and Rod Steiger make their only joint film appearance in Cattle Annie And Little Britches. Lancaster plays legendary outlaw Bill Doolin who operated in the Oklahoma Territory primarily and who the girls who've had their heads filled with dime novel fantasies become camp followers and are christened with those names by Lancaster. Steiger is legendary lawman Bill Tilghman who is on the trail of the Doolin gang. Worth seeing this film just to see them together in one scene.

According to the Lancaster biography Amanda Plummer regarding Lancaster as an acting mentor. She was impressed with his sheer physicality even in middle age. Burt certainly was no longer playing roles like The Crimson Pirate, but still he used his whole body and not just that clear speaking voice to get you to notice him. Steiger too has one memorable voice for the screen.

Cattle Annie And Little Britches is a sleeper western ready to be discovered by film fans. Make sure to see this if broadcast.

Two teen girls (Amanda Plummer & Diane Lane) hook up with the Doolin-Dalton Gang in 1890's Oklahoma Territory, but Bill Doolin (Burt Lancaster) is tired and the gang's heyday is behind them. Meanwhile Marshal Tilghman (Rod Steiger) is intent on putting the kibosh on the wild bunch. Scott Glenn and John Savage are on hand as members of the gang.

"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" (1981) is similar in tone to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and, like that film, was based on the real-life account, albeit loosely. "Young Guns" (1988) and "Young Guns II" (1990) did the same with the Billy the Kid story. The film starts off like "Bad Company" (1972) mixed with the fun spirit of "Butch Cassidy," but becomes weightier as it moves along with some pretty moving moments.

Plummer was 23 during filming while Lane was only 15. The former is utterly convincing as the sassy Annie and Savage is notable as her taciturn quasi-beau. The superb folk songs by Sahn Berti & Tom Slocum are stirring and sometimes profound. It's an inexplicably obscure Western, hardly promoted and barely released. I guess studios were gun shy after the devastating failure of "Heaven's Gate" (1980).

The film runs 1 hours, 37 minutes, and was shot in Durango, Mexico, about 1200 miles southwest of the real-life events.

GRADE: B

An adorable Diane Lane ("Unfaithful") and a wonderfully spunky Amanda Plummer ("Pulp Fiction"), the latter making her film debut, play the title roles in this highly engaging Western. Cattle Annie (Plummer) and Jenny a.k.a. Little Britches (Lane) are two young orphan girls who hook up with the remnants of the Doolin (Burt Lancaster, "Gunfight at the O. K. Corral") / Dalton (Scott Glenn, "The Silence of the Lambs") gang. Bill Doolin decides that the old gang still has some life left in it, and the girls inspire them to pull a few more jobs.

Overall, the film is good enough to make you think that it in no way deserved its fate. (It was "thrown away" by Universal, who distributed it in 1980.). Only in more recent years did it get released to Blu-ray & DVD, so people can now take pleasure in a slightly adult (there is some profanity, and some male nudity, albeit shot from behind) but still largely harmless bit of entertainment. Just like the Cattle Annie of the title, it has a lot of spirit, and a charismatic Lancaster and a low-key Glenn are just two top players in a cast that also includes Rod Steiger ("In the Heat of the Night") as lawman Bill Tilghman, John Savage ("The Deer Hunter"), William Russ ('Boy Meets World'), Redmond Gleeson ("Dreamscape"), Buck Taylor ("Tombstone"), Michael Conrad ('Hill Street Blues'), John Quade ("Every Which Way But Loose"), and Perry Lang ("Alligator").

The story, based on a novel and screen story by Robert Ward, has a great theme about idolization of outlaw characters and the need to see the reality behind the legend. It's a solid, entertaining tale with some choice bits of dialogue, and a rousing finale guaranteed to have viewers cheering.

The fact that this got such a limited release 44 years ago is in no way indicative of quality (or lack thereof), so give this one a look whenever you can.

Seven out of 10.

In her film debut, Amanda Plummer took on a bold, strong role and declared herself as a force to be reckoned with. She and Diane Lane play the title roles, two little girls in the Wild West who idolize outlaws. Caught up in the drama of paperback novels, they leave their small town and "loving" environments to catch up with a gang led by Burt Lancaster. Burt, as usual, has his larger-than-life energy that attracts both girls and makes it difficult for even the audience to think it's a bad idea for pre-teen girls to run around with guns and grown men.

Parts of this movie are cute, like when Diane confesses her crush on Burt. Amanda's invigorating speeches are charming and pick up where True Grit left off. But some of the movie feels inappropriate, and I was unsure at times if it was supposed to be a comedy or a drama. It's not the best western out there, but I did appreciate that it starred an actor who made a few westerns in his day. What's missing is simple: the tried-and-true heart-stirring feeling that all westerns from the golden age had. If you're uncertain whether the good guys are going to win, or if you're not even sure who the good guys are, it's a sure bet the western was made post-1965.

I know shamefully little about Lamont Johnson, other than he worked mainly in the TV medium. An ageing Burt Lancaster plays the part of Bill Doolin, leader of the Dalton-Doolin gang, which robs trains and banks and is chased by Marshall Tilghman, well portrayed by Rod Steiger.

John Savage also shines as a half-breed, but Amanda Plummer as Annie and Diane Lane as Little Britches steal the show as Doolin's most loyal supporters, even when the gang appears to be defunct.

Burt Lancaster was a great actor and he is the life of the film despite putting on smug facial expressions, wide gestures reminiscent of his TV Moses reaching the promised land, and clearly enjoying the love of underaged Little Briches. Meanwhile, his character as Bill Doolin veers constantly between good sense and uprightness on one hand, and robbing all he can and leading a bunch of outlaws on the other. When he notices the disappearance of the latest robbery's proceeds (dollar notes put away in the trousers of a lawman), at the cost of some of his men, he laughs like Walter Huston upon realizing that it is fool's gold, not the real thing, in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (US 1948). I did not like that sequence, or the ending, but I must admit that the film keeps an enticing pace throughout.

Scott Glenn seems sadly underused while John Savage begins substantially enough but somehow sinks into near invisibility after taking Cattle Annie swimming.

Strong cinematography by Larry Pizer, interesting soundtrack. 7/10.